Reading across the Divides: Commentary on the Political Co-presence of Disparate Identities in Two Regions of South Africa in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries

This introduction draws attention to the value of a parallel reading of the separately authored articles which follow. It shows how a consideration of historical and archaeological research across the regional divide of south-east and north-west southern Africa unsettles a number of disciplinary orthodoxies, notably notions of distinct Nguni and Sotho identities. Complex political arrangements relating to differential access to economic resources resulted in the active maintenance, within political configurations across the two regions, of distinctly different identities. These were often rooted in earlier identities and histories and then glossed in new ways. Our collaboration focuses on how the past was reworked in the light of new political-economic relations. We use the notion of ‘cultural inheritances’ to refer to ideas about the past and past identities and practices which enjoyed a certain continuity over time even as they were refashioned under changing conditions. We identify the operation of shared logics across the region which governed how this happened. While our work emphasises the significance of relationships between political dynamics and cultural inheritances at the level of the polity and its divisions, we also discuss their operation in the more intimate settings of households and homesteads.